No they are not.

The internet may become more engaging etc… but “virtual worlds” are not the future of global commerce. It’s not even the future of e-commerce. I suppose if you loosen the definition of “virtual worlds” to include anything on the internet, he may be half right. This just seems like too much of stretch IMHO.

Next week’s release:
ICANN to sell domain names in virtual worlds.

I agree with Paul Twomey but as I mentioned on the other post, I think the interface and user interaction semantics are all wrong.

I am guessing this will come at the same time as our robot servants and flying cars.

If I drove a “virtual car,” I would get nowhere. If I ate “virtual food,” I would starve!

According to the late Gene Roddenberry, we need about another 300+ years before there is good Holodeck technology, so with a utopian Roddenberry-esque view, Mr. Twomey may someday be correct.

Howevever, he’ll die still having been wrong. Unless of course he finds a way to transfer his consciousness to a virtual world before then.

pghernandez
To be fair to Twomey, he was describing virtual worlds as an interaction/ commerce space for the real world, if you like we’d enter a virtual 3D space to make real world purchases, get customer service etc… he wasn’t talking virtual goods. In a way he was describing the evolution from web page to immersive experience.

I seriously hope that’s not the future. I spend enough time walking around in real-life, why the hell do I want to do it in a virtual world? It might be fun in a game-like sense, but when I want to check the weather or read the latest blogs, I want to get straight to the point.

“we’d enter a virtual 3D space to make real world purchases, get customer service etc…”

But what’s the point? What would the interface be? I’m certainly fine with pointing and clicking on items within Amazon; is “walking around” really necessary? Is walking into a virtual “customer service” center, waiting in “virtual line”, and “virtually talking” to a representative really time saving?

I’m not sure I understand why the internet needs to go that route.

Mea culpa.

Robert Dewey, to your point, I’m there will ultimately be more commerce directly within the Google search experience than a virtual world. But if they want to make a 3D commerce kiosk that’s essentially a Google search box surrounded by pretty girls like the models TC is apparently hiring for TechCrunch40 — I’ll give it a try.

Hmmm, fascinating… It’s clear this man either feels he has to exercise a faculty he knows he does not possess, or so completely identifies with the importance of his title that he erroneously believes himself to possess it.

is this guy the owner of I Can Has Cheezburger?

from the point of view of the self, this world is already virtual, the senses approximate, the mind constructs apparent realities and filters them through belief systems… all computers are doing is rendering this situation more objectively…. in the sense that amazon is providing a bookstore-like experience to sell books is pretty virtual in itself…. the next level of imaginary worlds is just furthering the process …. the eternal quest of course is to find the self that is doing all of this… enjoy

Anyone who was there watching ICANN get created certainly wouldn’t attach the value Duncan does to their opinions.

If Jon Postel had said it in 1997 - it would be still be MORE deserving of a a blog post now.

Techcrunch isn’t Popular Science. FOCUS! Cheerlead start ups for god’s sake! Talk about VC. Stop tryng to predict the future.

Your audience doesn’t seek guidance, we seek war front facts and figures.

Thx.

I strongly believe that virtual worlds are the future of global commerce.

man, that’s a serious stretch to say that the future will be this virtual world ‘game’…we’ll see, but i highly doubt it - at least not being it the primary

Rubbish, this type of waffle shouldn’t be anywhere on techcrunch, the site is seriously losing focus.

One other thing, could you guys figure out which Ad server you are using that *sucks*. It makes browsing on a PC kind of jittery (some pauses when clicking on articles), on Iphone it makes the entire experience SUCK. Extremely long pauses near the end of the page loading, which presumably is some ad tracking/server someone that simply isn’t fast enough.

Techcrunch.co.uk however, is a joy to browse on iphone, very fast (I guess because you haven’t overloaded the site with ads).

Please fix

Chris T, on the ad situation, holy moly I can’t agree more. It at least does remind me to turn of Firebug and YSlow, but even with them totally disabled there are so many Javascript modules one’s almost bound to be down at a given moment.

Then again, I keep choosing to load the page.

What kind of drugs is that dude on?

As said by ..5.. above

If I drove a “virtual car,” I would get nowhere. If I ate “virtual food,” I would starve!

http://www.imageblox.com

Separate the Second Life level of interaction and think Tom Clancy’s Net Force.

For those claiming that this isn’t relevant: like them or hate them virtual spaces make up part of the new internet, and ICANN basically runs the internet, so when the head of the body that essentially underpins the internet tells an audience that virtual worlds are the future it is news worthy…particularly when I’m at the conference

Avatar-based 3D virtual worlds as the future of ecommerce - maybe for certain specific demographics but not for the entire base of Internet users, at least not any time in the forseeable future. That said, if you take a wider interpretation of virtual worlds to include all four categories outlined in the Metaverse Roadmap Overview (www.metaverseroadmap.org/overview/), then I see the combination of Augmented Reality, Mirror Worlds, and Lifelogging undoubtedly as the future of the Internet and ecommerce.

Taken from the Metaverse Roadmap Overview:

In augmented reality, Metaverse technologies enhance the external physical world for the individual, through the use of location-aware systems and interfaces that process and layer networked information on top of our everyday perception of the world.

Mirror worlds are informationally-enhanced virtual models or “reflections” of the physical world. Their construction involves sophisticated virtual mapping, modeling, and annotation tools, geospatial and other sensors, and location-aware and other lifelogging (history recording) technologies.

In lifelogging, augmentation technologies record and report the intimate states and life histories of objects and users, in support of object- and self-memory, observation, communication, and behavior modeling. Object Lifelogs (“spimes,” “blogjects,” etc.) maintain a narrative of use, environment and condition for physical objects. User Lifelogs, (”life-caching,” “documented lives,” etc.) allow people to make similar recordings of their own lives. Object lifelogs overlap with the AR scenario, and both rely on AR information networks and ubiquitous sensors.

http://www.beilblog.com

Duncan,
1. Twoomey is fundamentally a government stooge put in place to ensure that the namespace didn’t do anything, umm, imaginative
2. In what sense does ICANN ‘basically run the internet’? Sure, they manage the namespace (badly) but last time I looke there was a lot more to it than that - e.g. what is their hold over IP addressing or connectivity in China etc etc
3. If it was a subject that the guy was qualified to talk about it might be interesting.
My guess is that Twoomey is coming to the end of his sinecure at ICANN and is looking around for a Vint Cerf type posting at Google

Being a commerce student myself i totally agree with the above post. Commerce is boosting in and through online world. Youngsters and even settled business man get the touch of commerce.
Young generation get a feeling of responsibility

First let me say that ICANN does not in any way control or manage the Internet. It merely plays a coordination role for a community of some 10,000 or more people who manage the Internet system of unique identifiers, especially the Domain Name System and IP addresses.

While I appreciate the dialogue on my speech on this site , perhaps it would be worthwile sharing some of the text below. I do think, as I said as an aside in the speech, that the marriage of gaming type client functionality (such as we have seen in Keyhole which morphed into Google Earth) will have a big impact on customer interactions in a more broadband environment.

Some of the speech (in which I was asked to speak about the future of the Internet) appears below:

“In looking forward another ten years one can never have certainty. Indeed the comments in my next part of my speech are personal, not those of ICANN. This search into the looking glass is merely that of one individual.

While it’s difficult to be definitive about the future, here are some things I think we can expect:
• Usage of the Internet will be limited only by access to electricity. As many as 3 billion people may be able to enjoy a truly global Internet.
• Many, perhaps most, will access the Internet by using mobile devices.
• We’ll see a very significant increase in broadband access (over 100 mb/sec indeed up to 1 gigabit per second). Many developing countries such as Morocco, China and Malaysia are adopting accelerated broadband distribution programs to deliver the Internet to their citizens.
• A machine-to-machine Internet will overtake today’s person-to-person Internet.
• We will see billions of Internet-enabled appliances at home, at work, in the car, and in the pocket.
• Third parties will use the Internet to monitor all sorts of activities and utilities — from washing machines to cars to electricity meters.
• Geo-location and geo-indexed systems will be much more common and emergency services will be more precisely dispatched.
• There will be significant improvement in spoken interaction with Internet-based systems.
• We will see an even wider array of delivery methods for intellectual property (movies, sound tracks, books, and so on) than is available today. VoIP will be prevalent and SIP may be the principal protocol means by which calls are set up. Voice communication will be essentially free, except perhaps for calls that terminate on traditional PSTN devices including mobiles.
• Almost no industry will be offline since most will rely on the Internet for customer interaction, customer discovery, sales, service, advertising, and similar activities.
• Group interaction and collaborative support tools — including distributed games — will be very common.
• And last but certainly not least, internationalized domain names and new gTLDs will open up the Internet to much more multilingual content.

What will you be able to do in the future that you can’t do now? Here are a few examples:
• Manage your appliances and home security systems through online systems.
• Use your mobile phones as remote controllers.
• Download videos, music, and books as an everyday practice. Video on demand will focus on watching previously downloaded video rather than watching streaming, real-time video. This is really just an obvious extrapolation of the iPod/TiVo paradigm.
• You will be able to talk to the Internet itself to search for information and interact with various devices — and it will respond.
• Search systems will be more precise because meta-tagging of information will have become more common. This is part of the semantic web movement.
• Maintenance histories of products that can be serviced will be keyed to radio frequency IDs or bar codes associated with the devices. This is one potential use of Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6, which is the natural extension of the original IPv4.

What will the technical underpinnings of the Internet look like by then?
• Terabit per second local networking will be available as backbones for local networks.
• The domain name system will operate in multiple language scripts. Again, a result of deploying IDNs and new gTLDs.
• IPv6 will be widely deployed, once the technical and financial issues have been worked out.
• Better confidentiality and authenticity will be provided through the use of a public key crypto. This will provide more authentication all along the network.
• Much more inter-device interaction will be common, incorporating position location, sensor networks, and local radio communications.
• Spam, phishing, and various forms of denial of service attacks will continue a cold war-style arms race with defenses and better authentication techniques.
• Operating systems will continue to be troublesome sources of vulnerability.

What will everyone — businesses, other organizations, and individual users alike — still need to worry about?
• Spam and phishing
• Attacks on the domain name system
• Attacks at routing
• Fraud/IP spoofing
• Cyber protests …..

There should be no confusion: broadband speeds required to participate in the internet in 10 years time will be measured in the 100s of megabits per second. Indeed network planners in South Korea are now moving households to 1 gigabit connections today.

Why is the appropriate approach to broadband so important? It is because the Internet will continue to represent a massive and accelerating force for the reduction of transaction costs across the global economy, and a force for unprecedented innovation in the delivery of private and public services. “

“ICANN basically runs the internet”

Duncan is this the deep analysis Techcrunch is paying your for? Your insights are un-needed man, I’m tellng you - just cheerlead for start-ups!

Ugh.

If you need to stop going to as many conferences.

Ah, the cousin to the gaming industry. I was at an ESPN Zone (in real life, heh have to always say this) and wondering, what a virtual world mode attached to a Madden 2008 title would look like, what with EA and all in charge. ‘Sports’, I think is another word for ‘holy crap that’s a ton of money/economy/etc’.

I don’t subscribe to the ‘3D Web’ theory in general, but I don’t disagree with a scenario like this one. Money will flow, *especially* in places where people spend it.

Check Frank Schilling blog, he says Paul should Step Down as CEO of ICANN:

http://frankschilling.typepad......or-pa.html

Never has one man spouted so much rubbish.

He should be asked to clear his desk immediately.

ICANN is a stupid org IMHO

As and education service center we believe virtual environments are a central emerging technology for the classroom and virtual education as well:
http://rich.greenbush.us/index.....822-002455

VRML, anyone?

Putting any kind of interaction normally reserved for text-based web sites into the domain of World of Warcraft and Second Life is never going to be popular, simply because it’s a giant pain in the ass. Shopping online is efficient because I can see everything right in front of me and narrow it down immediately to get what I want. Shopping in real life is fun because I can browse freely and touch things, smell things, and try clothing on. Shopping in the land of the Lawnmower Man gives me none of the benefits of shopping on the internet and none of the benefits of shopping online - instead I’m stuck virtually “walking” around a store (waste of time) to look at products I may or may not want.

Now, if I wanted to ‘pull’ a bunch of items in my size and in a certain color or cut ‘off the shelf’ and compare them in 3D space, that would be incredibly useful, but I don’t need to be in some buzzword-laden immersive 3D world to do that!

And yes, there are some very popular 3D worlds out there. And guess what? The amount of users on them, let’s estimate liberally and say 20 million (I don’t know, WoW has 10, right?)… that’s still a pretty small percentage of total internet users. And the only real-world item you can order up in WoW is pizza. And THAT’S only about being too lazy to pick up the phone, not about having some incredibly advantage in shopping for pizza IN THREE-DEE ON THE INTERNETS!

Seriously, give me a step-by-step on how this will work, even in twenty to fifty years. It doesn’t matter if the technology is there, it’s just not ever going to be useful enough.

Now, while we’re talking about the future, let’s focus on flying electric cars and ending world hunger. That’s slightly more useful.

Avatar based virtual worlds in a much more advanced state than what we see today with second life etc. would be excellent for:

Checking out your new dreamhouse in 3 minutes from your home, trying on 100 sets of clothes in 5 mins, giving the new toyota 2025 a testdrive in your neighbourhood for 10 mins and maybe check how that next nano plastic surgery is gonna look. All while eating breakfast in the morning on your microsoft multitouch table. Some things work better with a body, virtual or real.

I think future avatars are gonna let us do things with our bodies that we would never have time for or even dare in real life. However I dont see virtual avatar based worlds taking over the internet thus killing off the web or similar. Its a bit like the book vs computer vs tv vs whatever debate. One thing doesnt rule out the other.

I’m guessing CEOs and companies that are heavily invested in certain types of commerce would have an interest in conflating e-commerce and “virtual worlds”. After all, virtual worlds have two salient attributes: (1) inside them, the user loses sight of reality; and (2) they can be addictive.

Aren’t those exactly the attributes Corporate America wants customers to have? E.g., being blind to the facts, and being addicted to buying.

MSNville is on the way, do not bother to mess arround with this stuff!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Most of the readers have probably already discovered William Gibson’s work. I just stumbled upon it and am currently reading the Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive). If you want to “see” what this might look like, then I’d recommend checking it out. Sure, it is really fanciful (even tho it was published in the 80’s), but it is fascinating. According to futurists, and those in future studies, we are accelerating very, very, rapidly. Who knows what the virtual worlds/overlap b/n “real” world and the cyber world will look like in 10, 20, 30 years…

Twomey mentions The Sims Online and Google Earth as places to keep an eye on in this arena, but I am also watching sites like SL (since it currently is the most influential), Club Penguin (it’s target audience), and even the up and comer http://www.citypixel.com/ in the near future. Should be very interesting.

Twomney in my opinion has almost totally abrograted his responsibility to provide Asia with a fully functioning internet in a timely manner and has therefore held back economic development in Asia that has cost billions. His blame in this respect is much less than than Bill Gates but this kind of chatter should be reserved for about 10 years down the line when the task at hand is delivered and he has earned the right to put his feet up a philosphize.

Please TechCrunch People, Archive this Comments board.
It is a piece of history

Playstation HOME !

I could spend the week answering and talking how right M. Twomey is. actually I do it in some way, having turned my architect carreer in this direction for 10 years now. I’m even making my living out of that

to deny it is like to say:
You could never make a computer intelligent because you would have to tell it everything… And then boom, the internet.

Let’s say I need some office supplies. Would I rather go to Staples.com…or would I login to a virtual world and do everything in 3-d replete with avatars? There is a reason that Craigslist works…it is easy. We don’t need to over-engineer the commerce side of things. Text and simple graphics work just fine.

Why is this kool-aid so refreshing to everyone? Virtual Worlds are not the future…they are simply a component of the future.

I totally agree with Paul re virtual worlds for global commerce, though particularly for niche consumer hard goods. Imagine going into a virtual Walmart or COSTCO, wearing 3D glasses or watching a 3D screen, walking down the aisles looking at everything from big boxed Corn Flakes to Dell’s latest wireless PC/phone, implant optional. How about walking into a virtual Amazon, past the rows and rows of millions of full face displayed stacked books that you can click on and hear virtual excerpts, book jacket summary, and reviews? Order online, get it delivered [downloaded where applicable] or pick it up at a central location.

Click on “OTHERS” and see x number of other shoppers walking in the aisles, stop and talk with them, meet & greet. Want shoppers who are geographically close to you in the real world so you can meet in person? Just click “OTHERS NEAR,” . . . “let’s have coffee, tea, or me?”

Want to earn some $, get a purchase discount? Wear a virtual bit of clothing that says, “TIDE,” “DELL,” “CHEVROLET,” “NIKE,” or “LEVIS.” Amount earned will be dependent upon amount of virtual traffic seeing you, like a billboard, earn more if click thru, take a virtual drive in a new auto, or even that lawn mower you need for the yard, and, if you buy, you get a discount and the “walking virtual billboard” gets $. Same goes for the local dentist, wear a DDS’s virtual t-shirt billboard and get free dental if x number of prospects click thru.

. . . you get the idea!

No, actually one of the big attractions of the internet is that it is nothing like the Real World.

I guess the ones who HAD the idea got it,
but the ones who didn’t still don’t.
It seems not to be that obvious to forsee a situation that implies the addition of a dimension.
How ever much you geeks are, on the edge and so on, it is ridiculously retarded to make comments like:
“Putting any kind of interaction normally reserved for text-based web sites into the domain of World of Warcraft and Second Life is never going to be popular, simply because it’s a giant pain in the ass.” (I personnaly started with VRML, it was great )
“If I drove a “virtual car,” I would get nowhere. If I ate “virtual food,” I would starve!”
“I spend enough time walking around in real-life, why the hell do I want to do it in a virtual world? ”

…and so forth

sound all to me like
“why would I need an information higway ? I already have a Highway nearby”

No need to worry about the “Sims / Second Life / WoW / VRML” legacy. The concept referred to as “virtual worlds” goes much deeper. Reductionists will of course always be around and continue to pretend that nothing is happening, and state those views. It’s also not about “3D” at all.
As I write in the Metaverse Manifesto there are those who are entrenched in existing realities and are steadfast in their determination not to accept digital realities. Then, there are those who are already building metaversal realities. Saying “virtual worlds are the future” doesn’t have to mean that everyone will use them or even be interested.

Businesses will of course move to use the virtual world structures for their own functioning, so the blogged comment is largely true, if just vague at the current time. The difference is that the new worlds will be so different from the 2007 concept of “media” that there is no precedent to approach this as a place to “market” and therefore, many experts who do see what’s coming are in a panic.

I have something that will change everyone’s mind about the way they see Virtual Reality Worlds. Red Light Center.us is the #1 virtual world for adults. There is an ecommerce system that is one of the most advanced ecommerce systems ever put into a virtual world. This site is leading the way in virtual reality. Do yourself a favor by clicking on the words Red Light Center right above. Experience for yourself the #1 virtual reality world! It is well worth it!

Why does 3d need to be justified..AT ALL?

To me, if you think of the internet, its very natural
to think of web3d. Its like an organism.

If the modem/pc is the car, then web3d is the destination.
All the other 2d webpages are simply magazines.
you read online.

PG Hernandez , my virtual car takes me from california to tokyo! your car takes you to the local market in traffic and back and your day is half gone.

ICANN was created by THE Clintons and Ira Magaziner to handle some simple Proof-of-Concept Market Trials to expand the name space.

ICANN has made a complete mess of that simple task.

The American people and the U.S. Government will not continue to tolerate such nonsense. Why would they want some Australians “shaping” and
dictating the on-line experiences that Americans will expect to come from
Free Market evolution.

Over 10 years ago, many people moved to 3D virtual communities [long
before Second Life] to prepare for the phases AFTER the Proof-of-Concept
Market trails. Netizens are being quietly and slowly migrated off of the
DARPA Cartel’s transport.

Soon entire continents, such as Australia, will NOT BE ROUTED. They do not
have the needed bandwidth for the broadband services that are becoming
the norm. At some point, the U.S. Government and a new generation of
leaders will wake up and realize that they have a brand new Internet
free of the nonsense that the DARPA Cartel has perpetuated.

What may continue to be routed is simple-minded text-message services,
email spam and the other 1980s technology that ICANN loves to preserve
in their new quest to maintain stability and of course job security.

Some Americans may continue to live in the past. Others may find that the
new generation of services (fueled by new technology and larger
address spaces) will be more appealing. They will of course be allowed
to vote with their keyboards, mice and on-line money. ICANN is expected
to disappear as a bad dream once consumers are given a real choice.

ICANN will never be allowed anywhere near any advanced 3D on-line
technology being developed for the American markets. People who
invest the dollars in those developments are fully aware of what ICANN
represents. Any claims that ICANN’s CEO makes about being part of
those plans are absolutely false. The ICANN camel will not be allowed in
those tents or 3D online worlds.